Our work contributes to the optimisation of mixed-groups of farmers, foresters and other stakeholders that aim to develop jointly innovative solutions because they aim to address economic, environmental, social, and cultural challenges their farms and we as a society are facing. With LIAISON, we support the development of EU policies that aim to speed-up innovation in agriculture, forestry and associated value chains throughout Europe.

LIAISON has a highly interactive work progamme that is based on participation of the diversity of consortium partners and our network of associated stakeholders such as the Rural Innovation Ambassadors, the macro-regional stakeholders and our Project Advisory Group.

Together with relevant stakeholders, we develop a shared, but versatile, Conceptual framework for the analysis and assessment of innovation processes and change in agriculture, forestry, rural businesses and initiatives. This includes a continuous reflection on common definition and our understanding of the key terms and concepts to be employed.

We are continuously aiming at Optimising group work. We identify good practices and spread widely their use in the planning and implementation of participatory research and innovation actions.

Interactive innovation can be achieved by using a multi-actor approach to identify, adapt and adopt effective practices across a range of projects funded by the European programmes Horizon2020 (and future HorizonEurope). Moreover, we are interested in other EU funded or co-funded programmes as well as nationally supported programs that aim at speeding up innovation in rural areas.

Through our Field work, we are identifying, developing and disseminating a set of ‘good’ practices for the effective governance of innovation projects and actions, and promote ‘clever alliances’ through partnership by recognizing good governance and effective partnership practices for EU-, nationally or privately funded rural innovation projects and networks as well as non-funded initiatives. The awareness of Gender related behavior and decision making, the Protection of personal data and other concerns related to Ethics play a particular role for all our activities.

In our multi-contextual project, we are interested in finding tools for the Evaluation and Assessment of interactive innovation. National, European or international Organisations use popular indices to measure agricultural innovation. However, these measures pay little attention to participation and interactivity. LIAISON is testing a variety of methods and is preparing practice-ready tools. We aim to make a meaningful contribution to enhancing the evaluation and self-assessment of cooperation for innovation.

For the preparation of results, we will integrate all findings and synthesise the main recommendations. We aim to meet the needs of those that are enhancing and enabling the interactive innovation.